2k words
***
“That’s puttin’ it lightly,” Mazkha said. “I’ll tell you this, if he were a warboss in my Warrgh, and he got us into a tight scrape like in that ambush, he wouldn’t last till sunrise.”
-xXx-
There wasn’t much change in the scenery the following morning, until they reached the eastern edge of the Contreforts, where the flatlands met the gradual slopes of the northern faces of the Grey Mountains. Barely any plant life could live in such unsheltered, open lands, but that gradually shifted the more south and east they rode, more groves like the one they’d made camp in sprouting up in spare clusters.
It was almost midday when they came upon the battlefield the scout had described. The gradient of dry grassland became first greyed and then ashen, and what few tress had been here had been reduced to black stumps barely higher than a knee, poking out of the ground in a roughly hundred-meter radius like little fingers. It seemed as if a forest fire had blazed through this part of the steppes, thriving in the dry climate and peeling away the grass to expose featureless earth beneath.
Tree stumps were not the only thing littering the blasted area. Roderick could see askew banners planted into the ground at odd angles, some with tattered flags that flapped pathetically. The bodies of slain horses were backed between, a lingering evidence of a failed charge or flank, armoured figures slumped close by, covered in dirt and dried blood.
“Your scout wasn’t exaggerating,” Roderick said. “This was no mere skirmish. Keep your weapon ready.”
“Think there’s any survivors?” Mazkha asked.
“Unlikely. Whoever won would have come through and cleaned up whoever was left. But places like this attract all sorts of undesirables Be ready for anything.”
They rode deeper into the ruined battlefield, Roderick steering his horse round several clumps of the dead. He could see deda men with the Brettonian coat of arms painted onto discarded shields and smashed chest pieces, and before long he could identify who the knights had been opposing. Tall men in half-mail and horned helmets made up a significant portion of the dead, their barbarian appearance just like those who’d accosted them at Cassel. Was it just coincidence, or were the forces of Chaos invading the Empire and Brettonia both?
There were craters pockmarking the field in places, maybe three meters in diameter each and about waist-deep each, little puddles of rainwater filling their bottoms. They must be results of explosions of some kind, by the way the mangled bodies seem to concentrate around their borders. Sweat and blood was thick in the air, only the wind saving Roderick from gagging.
“Hey, check it out,” Mazkha said, gesturing to their left. “Is that our friend Bael over there?”
He followed her over to a great, hulking corpse of metal. It was a Chaos warrior, donned in thick, crimson armour with golden trims on the rondels, pauldrons and skirt, complete with a tall helmet with the horns shaped into Khorne’s mantle of war. Roderick unsaddle himself for a closer inspection, using his boot to flip the body onto its back.
“The resemblance is there, but this isn’t him,” Roderick said. “He’s not wearing a pelt over his neck, and Bael’s helmet was a different colour. Still, if there are other Chaos warriors here, this is troubling.”
“How so? ‘Cause of the better wargear?”
“They also fight like deamons, in more ways than one,” said. “I’ve seen some who’s arms have been shot or cut off at the shoulder, yet they keep on fighting, more frustrated at the lack of a hand to hold an axe than anything. They may look like men, but beneath that veneer is something more beast than human.”
“Kinda like a vampire, but cranked up a notch,” Mazkha said. “Chop off a vampire’s arm, and it’ll regenerate after a while. I’m guessin’ if they’re here, Chaos came out on top on this one?”
“It’s hard to tell,” he said, returning to his saddle. “We should split up, see if we can find anything to suggest who did. Whoever won this battle, we need to know who their loyalties lie to.”
Mazkha nodded, and the two circled the field in either direction to cover the most ground. Roderick was capable of reading tracks, but the mess of hoofprints and boots made it difficult to discern if anyone had fled from the battle. To one side of the burnt patch was the expanse of the steppes, while the other touched the borders of a patch of woods, the spread of fire having not gone too far into its heart to burn all the woodlands down.
After a couple minutes of searching, Mazkha returned to his side, the stomps of her boar announcing her approach. “Think I got something,” she told him. “By the trees, south side.”
She led him over the heart of the battlefield, where the most damage had been done. There were more Chaos warriors and knights, their plated armour glinting in the light were it wasn’t obscured by muck. They were forced to lower the speed of their mounts here, as the earth here was covered in ditches that were the perfect size and depth to break an ankle.
“All these craters,” Mazkha muttered. “Any idea what caused them?”
“I would guess hand grenades, maybe launchers, but those are Imperial weapons,” Roderick replied. “The Brettonians do not favour black powder handguns. This looks like cannonfire.”
They stopped at the far side, at a break in the tree line, where another crater had blasted the earth nearby, a knight and his horse collapsed in the ditch. From the look of both the man and the mount, they’d been dead for many days, but not long enough that decay had set in. It lined up with the scout’s report.
“Wheel tracks lead into the trees from here,” Mazkha told him. “See the marks over there?
He could tell now that she’d pointed it out. Some sort of wagon or cart had rolled out from the field and into the tree line right at the edge of the burned patch.
“Are idea how old they are?” he asked her.
“It’s newer than the rest, that much I’m sure of. Shall we?”
“It’s the only lead we have,” he conceded. “Let’s go.”
Mazkha pulled a head a little, her eyes fixed to the ground while she steered her boar with her knees. The woods curled over them as they moved deeper inside, the shade providing a welcome reprieve from the sun. Through the breaches of the canopy he caught glimpses of the Grey Mountains, looming so close he could make out all the little rocks and points on its sloped face. It wouldn’t be long now before they reached the borders of home, but there would be time for such thoughts later.
Although the woods technically belonged to Brettonian lands, they were far from as colourful as the forests around Lyonesse. The gradient had turned to more temperate colours, though there was the occasional autumn splash here and there. He would be lying if he did not think Brettonian a wondrous, beautiful province, but there was something to be said for the simple modesty of the homeland.
“Wait up,” Mazkha said, snapping him from his thoughts. “Can you hear that?”
“No?” he whispered, eyeing the woods cautiously. They’d gone far beyond the tree line, the battlefield vanishing into layers of ferns and shrubs. “What is it?”
“Voices, we should go on foot from here, just in case.”
They dismounted, Mazha pulling her rotary crossbow from her sling, checking the mechanism to make sure it was loaded. Roderick did likewise, drawing one of his handguns, falling in behind her as she crept into the wall of shrubs ahead.
Roderick began to hear them too, after a minute’s delay. A cough, a laugh, a muted conversation overlapping both. The speakers were coming from dead ahead of them, yet the bushland was thick and they could barely see a few meters ahead of them.
Mazkha glanced back at him, pointing at the ground between them. The grass was littered with twigs and sticks, and they had to make an effort to avoid them lest they draw unwanted attention. Roderick counted maybe six distinct voices, and that was being stringent, and his guts knotted with tension the closer and louder they grew.
Soon he could make out some sort of clearing ahead, and with a rustle of leaves, Mazkha parted a branch to get a look ahead. As Roderick crouched to peer through the leafy window, he cursed under his breath at what he saw.
It was a camp, and no small one either. Maybe a dozen tents had been hammered into the earth all around the clearing, , most big enough to house four or five men a piece, yet deeply concealed this far within the woods. Between them were a handful of cooking pots boiling over firepits, and there were tens of men walking or sitting around them. Most had removed their helmets and other wargear, but Roderick could recognise a Chaos marauder when he saw one.
“Comet preserve us,” Roderick mumbled. “It’s as big as band as Bael’s was.”
“And better armed too,” Mazkha replied. “Look at those things they got with them.”
She gestured to the left side of the camp, where a portion of a log barricade had been erected at the side of the clearing. There were a few warriors peering out into the woods above the makeshift battlements, but it was what was behind them that had drawn his attention.
It resembled a cannon, but it was far from a simple black powder contraption. It sat on a paid of wheels the size of a cart, with spokes that stretched beyond the wheel and corkscrewing into spiked tips. The wheels were connected by a cart with a groove along the top face, and resting on this bed was a giant iron tube, with a diameter of five or six feet, and its length had to be at least thirty from the back to the nose. Or in this case, back to mouth, as the firing end off the cylinder resembled that of a daemonic maw, complete with iron teeth around the rim and a pair of twisting horns sprouting from the top. From this angle he could see little sockets in the shape of eyes, only reinforcing the idea that the steel had been construed into a face.
There was another of its like just behind it, the barrel mounts facing towards the sky at an angle, and the two were giving off a sweltering amount of heat. Along the sides of the cannon were vertical grills that were glowing red with heat, and Roderick could feel the temperature even from where he was hiding. He didn’t know how the marauders could withstand being so close to it, but maybe Khorne’s chosen were unaffected by its influence.
“That explains all those craters back there,” Mazkha said. “Guns like that must load shells as big as a bathtub. How do they load those things?”
“They don’t,” Roderick replied, Mazkha titling her head at him. “We’ve seen all we need to, let’s leave this place.”
They carefully moved away from the clearing, retreating the way they’d come. When they were sure they were out of earshot, Mazkha spoke up, her crossbow lowered but still readied.
“Now we know who came out on top of thatfight we saw,” Mazkha said. “Not that I’m all that surprised. These Chaos boys are really hitting the Brettonians where it hurts. I’ve never seen Vampires field artillery that big before…”
“They’re more than just war machines,” Roderick explained. “Those were hellcannons, malignant daemons ripped straight out of the realms of Chaos themselves. They may look like machine’s, but they’re as alive as you or me, and they spit bolts of magma that can level a town in one volley.”
“You’re sayin’ those things are alive?” Mazkha said. “How do they control where to shoot them? Ask it nicely?”
“Sometimes they can’t. If there’s no targets to shoot, or no crew to help wheel it around, I’ve seen them turn on their own side in a fit of what I could only describe as a rampage. I’ve never seen one at rest like that before, perhaps those warriors put it to sleep or something.”
“So that heat comin’ off it,” Mazkha said. “Was that it… breathin’ or somethin’?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Livin’, breathing machines,” Mazkha grumbled. “Who woulda thunk? I’m startin’ to regret bein’ so eager to take this job.”
“We need to get back to Von Kessel and the others,” Roderick said. “I had hoped we might be able to deal it on our own, but there’s more than I expected, and if they have hellcannons, this is more than just a simple raiding band.”
“Think they’re on their way to Marienburg, same as us?”
“They’re moving the same direction as we plan to. It’s not impossible. I’ll get some of my best riders to keep track of their movements, if they continue to move south, we’ll need-”
Mazkha seized his arm, her yellow eyes fixed on something ahead. Roderick turned to look, and between the trees he saw a figure moving through the undergrowth.